Certain beverage preparation machines use capsules containing ingredients to be extracted or to be dissolved; for other machines, the ingredients are stored and dosed automatically in the machine or else are added at the time of preparation of the drink.
Most coffee or other beverage machines possess filling means that include a pump for liquid, usually water, which pumps the liquid from a source of water that is cold or indeed heated through heating means, such as a heating resistor, a thermoblock or the like. Such filling means are usually controlled via a control unit of the machine, typically including a printed circuit board with a controller.
For allowing the user to interact with such machines, for providing operation instructions to the machine or obtaining feed-back therefrom, various systems have been disclosed in the art, for instance as mentioned in the following references: AT 410 377, CH 682 798, DE 44 29 353, DE 202 00 419, DE 20 2006 019 039, DE 2007 008 590, EP 1 302 138, EP 1 448 084, EP 1 676 509, EP 08155851.2, FR 2 624 844, GB 2 397 510, U.S. Pat. No. 4,377,049, U.S. Pat. No. 4,458,735, U.S. Pat. No. 4,554,419, U.S. Pat. No. 4,767,632, U.S. Pat. No. 4,954,697, U.S. Pat. No. 5,312,020, U.S. Pat. No. 5,335,705, U.S. Pat. No. 5,372,061, U.S. Pat. No. 5,375,508, U.S. Pat. No. 5,731,981, U.S. Pat. No. 5,645,230, U.S. Pat. No. 5,836,236, U.S. Pat. No. 5,959,869, U.S. Pat. No. 6,182,555, U.S. Pat. No. 6,354,341, U.S. Pat. No. 6,759,072, US 2007/0157820, WO 97/25634, WO99/50172, WO 2004/030435, WO 2004/030438, WO 2006/063645, WO 2006/090183, WO 2007/003062, WO 2007/003990, WO 2008/104751, WO 2008/138710, WO 2008/138820 and WO 2009/016490.
One aspect of beverage preparation machines concerns the after sale service and management of machine failures, or like-behaviours from a user perspective. In particular, it is not exceptional that an undesired behaviour of a beverage preparation machine does not result from an actual malfunctioning of the machine but from a previous, unintentional and/or overlooked upsetting of the machine user-settings by the user. For example, by an inappropriate handling of the machine, a user may unconsciously upset the cup size user-setting, from a large size cup to a small size cup or vice versa, and associated the upset setting to a malfunctioning of the machine. What appears to be a malfunctioning of the machine is in fact merely a user-setting problem. The after sale services, i.e. usually the repair services, are then confronted with the handling of such perfectly well functioning machines for the mere sake of changing the undesired user-setting. This, of course, involves a lot of costs that could be easily avoided by properly identifying the issue at the user premises and resetting the machine appropriately.
A solution to this problem lies in a data-communication connection of the beverage preparation machine with a remote service centre, typically via the internet. Hence, an automatic remote diagnosis can be carried out on the machine to differentiate between a true malfunctioning of the machine that requires physical intervention on the machine by the repair and/or maintenance services and a mere user-setting issue that may be dealt with remotely, either by properly instructing the user on the handling of the machine, or even automatically by remote re-setting of the machine via the data-communication connection.
EP 1 302 138 discloses a beverage machine connected to a network. The machine is arranged to communicate with a distant server to carry out diagnosis of the beverage machine and to update the machine's control software via the network. The machine has an interface for connecting a portable memory device, i.e. a USB key, for transporting data from and to a PC connected via the internet to a service centre.
PCT/EP09/058,540 discloses an advanced beverage preparation machine with an ergonomic versatile human-machine interface and a network connection. In an embodiment, the machine has an interface for connection to a data-exchange network.
Even though it has been proposed to connect beverage preparation machines to a network for the purpose of diagnosis or servicing, such a connection requires that a user has access to a network infrastructure, typically the internet, such that the beverage preparation machine can be connected thereto, e.g. via a modem of the machine. This involves a substantial infrastructure and costs that may hardly be justified for all beverage preparation machines.